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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Birger Lens Mount Reservations

With the latest build and 1:1 magnification it should be even better to check / calibrate the backfocus. I'm using the Tokina 11-16 fine and I'm not racked all the way in.

As I said in a previous post, I adjusted infinity with a fast prime f1.2 lens, and touch wood all seems ok. I compared the resulting lens behaviour with the same lenses mounted on a 1Ds

One thing I did note is that you need to be careful how you screw down the mount. I hold the whole mount firmly home by hand and apply just enough allen key torque to get the main 4 bolts home, then tighten.
Take care the mount is not skew ... not hard to do if you are shimmed out a tad since the mount is sitting on a small(er) ring rather than the outside mount perimiter. Very hard to tell, but given it's design it's not hard to get it wrong. Perhaps this is not helping some folk ??? just a guess / suggestion.

Cheers
 
Since most Canon lenses focus past infinity in order to compensate for variations in temperature, humidity and mechanical tolerance, back focusing a prime is not as critical as back focusing a zoom. Interestingly though back focusing a zoom is also easier to do than a prime because no distance measurements are required. To properly back focus a zoom place a back focus chart about four feet from the sensor plane. Make sure the lens is set to full open aperture. Zoom all the way in and focus. Make a note of the focus mark on the lens. Then zoom all the out and refocus. If you are at a differant focus position than when zoomed in your mount needs to be adjusted. Note the ring numbers on the mount as you adjust. Try adjusting just one full number on the mount's ring and see what effect it had on back focus. The goal is to get the same lens focus position at zoomed in and at wide. It may take as many as ten adjustments. I have 4 zooms and I found one setting that is perfect for all. This goes for both my Red Ones, though one mount ended up at 4 and one between 4 and 5. Evidently there are tolerance variations on the Red One's construction.
 
Mark Crabtree said:
The goal is to get the same lens focus position at zoomed in and at wide.
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I agree that this is the end goal, however I cannot achieve this behaviour with the zooms mounted on the Canon bodies, so I aimed to replicate this behaviour on the R1 :sarcasm:

Cheers
 
David Nardini said:
however I cannot achieve this behaviour with the zooms mounted on the Canon bodies, so I aimed to replicate this behaviour on the R1
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... for, you don't have the adjustment of backfocus on Canon bodies. :-)

If I've understood it right, if needed Canon service can fine adjust the L-series lenses such that one should be able to keep focus between wide and zoom end.
 
Erik got my mount Oct 28... I still haven't got my mount back... been 18 days.

:-( I am soo frustrated.

I just read the tags.. godot, mount.

It made me smile.. I want to laugh.. I'm just too down cause of this mount. I really hope Erik makes through.
 
Thom said:
:matrix: Psst. Hey, Aqua... Beta Test any knobs yet?
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I wish, and keep pushing...and holding breath - fortunately underwater guys are used to that.

Jason Ing said:
Just read this post by Jim. I think "custom mounts" would include the Birger mount.
So the Birger mount is not compatible with Scarlett or Epic.


The only accessories I can think of that are not compatible are:

CF Module
Top Mount
Custom lens mounts (Nikon, Canon, etc.)

Everything else works...

Jim
Click to expand...

I don't think this means they CAN'T work, just that the front face is different so may need modification. The wording on the brochure sounds like RED may be planning to have RED nikon and Canon smart mounts of their own?

It also looks like (but if anyone from RED is here it would be nice to know..) that these cameras may have more of a "hard" front where the manufacturing tolerances are tighter so minimal differences and so may not need an adjustable mount.

However, I don't see anything that would make it hard to make the birger mount work on any of them with fairly minor mods and one of the exciting things I see as a possibility is the 2/3" 3K scarlet with a Birger mount for Four Thirds lenses - which would be great for regular shooting but more importantly FOR 3D USE. Because the RED spec calls for a C mount and B4 mount there are lenses available but the lens choices aren't that great - good B4 lenses are extremely expensive and c-mounts aren't very good. The four-thirds lenses are excellent and they include serious entries from Leica and Sigma AND the smaller size allows F2 zooms - a stop faster than the typical f2.8 for the high end APS-C and FF DSLR lens. Olympus has an F2 14-35mm zoom and an F2 35-100mm zoom and an F2 150mm prime (100mm on 2/3" scarlet would be equivalent to a 360mm on a REDONE and 150 is equivalent to 480mm) and there is an F2.8 70-200 - equivalent to 640mm on a REDONE. Imagine the possibilities not only for 3D but for nature photography.

Again, all this on a 2/3" scarlet with a 3K mysterium-x sensor for $2500.

Because it is an open standard you don't have the reverse engineering problems you have with Nikon and Canon. Four Thirds is close enough to 2/3" size that you can still get good wide angle as well.

From Wikipedia "The Four Thirds System is a standard created by Olympus and Kodak (Fuji, Leica, Olympus, Panasonic, Sanyo and Sigma are now part of the 4/3 consortium) for digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLR) design and development.

The system provides a standard that... allows for the interchange of lenses and bodies from different manufacturers. ...Unlike older SLR systems, Four Thirds has been designed from the ground up to be entirely digital. Lens design has been tailored to the requirements of digital sensors, most notably through telecentric designs. The size of the sensor is slightly smaller than for most DSLRs (see drawing below) and this implies that lenses, especially telephoto lenses, can be smaller. .... the Four Thirds System is said to have a crop factor (focal length multiplier) of about 2."
 
Martin Weiss said:
Been wondering when someone would notice - and understand. Akube won - I just don't know what... Hehe

Glad I could bring a smile in these (insert own phrase) times.
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oh.. cool.. lol.. i was like.. that is such an awesome tag... its like.. too philosophical and shit. But it soooo fits... two words.. that truly sum up this entire thread. godot is all about waiting for this guy who never appears... and mount is well.. its about this mount. lol. pretty neat.

It gave me flashbacks.. I had a film that participated in the film festival I run... and it was the first one i ran... hence the flashbacks... so I had this filmmaker ... the film sucked ass.. and it was called... Waiting for AUS, AUS is a university's name here.. so it's about a bunch of students waiting for their school to start. The film said it was an adaptation of waiting for godot.. but looked nothing like it. lol. I still put him in competition cause atleast he knows wtf godot is and the jury would give him a piece of their mind on their film. That was one tough festival to run. Didnt sleep for a whole week.. broke the record.
 
Steve Murray said:
Has something changed from the first mounts that were shipped to the last few? Have any of you guys who got the first 30 mounts not had this problem? No one else shooting super wide with the Birger until now?
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The Tokina is really new.

Maybe I'm smoking dope and my lens actually is messed up and that's as sharp as it'll get at infinity. Collimating further away from the sensor makes it obviously worse so that's not the solution.

I think the mount is maybe .5 to 1mm too thick. That's my current guess anyway.

To me the telltale sign is the lenses focus marks seem to be accurate on a SLR but read as further away on Birger/RED. This problem amplifies with wider lenses. ERGO - I believe I don't have perfect collimation. (but I'm no expert so I'm hesitant to declare anything)

Perhaps some RED's and/or some Birgers are different enough to screw some of us up.
 
Paris Remillard said:
Seriously, Erik, give us some kind of update. Your last post was 3 full weeks ago. There is obviously a problem, so just let us know what it is.
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Yes, exactly, ball up, not only give an update but why don't you give everyone who haven't received their mounts some indication, based in the reality of what you are dealing with. A time frame when they might get there mounts.

There isn't a lot of honesty going on here. If you put out dates add an extra 6 months on to your original estimate. Sure people would be pissed off initially. The time frame being longer then they expected. Then they would settle back and say, "well at least I have something". On this thread though I can see this being a bad idea because the whole idea of setting dates has left a bad taste in every ones mouths.

I would never imagine doing business like this no matter how amazing my product is that I am selling. I would still let my customers, without whom I would have no one to sell to, what the heck is going on.

Your not the only one that has done this though, I am not being hard on you as an individual, it is your business practices. Unless a hundred are going to go out next week, pull your socks up and man up and let us in on whats going on. Let us share your frustrations with you rather then be frustrated at you.
 
1Dog said:
Yes, exactly, ball up, not only give an update but why don't you give everyone who hasn't received their mounts some indication based in the reality of what you are dealing with a time frame when they might get there mounts.

There isn't a lot of honesty going on here. If you put out dates add an extra 2 months on to your original estimate. Sure people would be pissed off initially that the time is long then they expected but then they would settle back and say well at least I have something.

I would never imagine doing business like this no matter how amazing my product is that I am selling. I would still let my customers, without whom I would have no one to sell to, what the heck is going on.

Your not the only one that has done this though, I am not being hard on you as an individual, it is your business practices. Unless a hundred are going to go out next week, pull your socks up and man up and let us in on whats going on. Let us share your frustration rather then be frustrated at you.
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I'm honestly baffled why Erik doesn't just take literally a few minutes to post an update to reduser.net as to the status of this mount.

Here is part of an email I sent to Birger just days ago:

"I suggest sending a group email to all those who haven't received their order as to what is happening. The silence does no good at all, and I find it highly disrespectful to those who are supporters and customers of Birger."
 
RndmAxess said:
I'm honestly baffled why Erik doesn't just take literally a few minutes to post an update to reduser.net as to the status of this mount.

Here is part of an email I sent to Birger just days ago:

"I suggest sending a group email to all those who haven't received their order as to what is happening. The silence does no good at all, and I find it highly disrespectful to those who are supporters and customers of Birger."
Click to expand...

I've sent several emails as well. No reply.
 
Akube said:
Erik got my mount Oct 28... I still haven't got my mount back... been 18 days.

:-( I am soo frustrated.

I just read the tags.. godot, mount.

It made me smile.. I want to laugh.. I'm just too down cause of this mount. I really hope Erik makes through.
Click to expand...

You're waiting that long for maintenance service?

So this waiting may not have anything to do with "engineering difficulties", etc. This may have something to do with customer service in general. If a mount breaks or has a defect, etc., we'll have to wait through this terrible customer service again?

It's one thing to wait for a new product in development... like Red. It's another thing when it comes to basic customer service. That's one thing Red has got nailed down.

I'm starting to think that any "savings" going the birger/canon route won't be savings in the long run. Especially with Scarlett and Epic having their own Nikon/Canon mounts. Although that may be a year away, I think they'll still beat Erik to the finish line.
 
Not blaming the messenger but...

Not blaming the messenger but...

A few days? It's been over 3 weeks... How hard is it to type a few lines on reduser?

Mark Crabtree said:
I spoke with Erik on Friday and he said he was keeping off Reduser for a few days to get work done. He said he will post very soon with an update.
Click to expand...
 
Mark Crabtree said:
I spoke with Erik on Friday and he said he was keeping off Reduser for a few days to get work done. He said he will post very soon with an update.
Click to expand...

Sorry, that excuse doesn't fly.

But Akube will be happy to hear that his broken mount is getting 2 minutes more worth of attention.

And it's nice that his friends stick up for him. :)
 
For what it's worth, I think Birger should be run by Amy - women are so much better at multi-tasking!!! It doesn't matter what the circumstances and how good the eventual product ends up being, the lack of service so far is BEYOND BELIEF :angry01:
I for one, was very happy to see Jarrad's post, letting everyone know that Birger are not involved with the mount development for Epic.
 
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